Data from the past week doesn't show the United States heading back into a recession - not yet, at least, according to a market and economic update from U.S. Bank released this week.
It bases its findings on the U.S. job market seeing a slight increase in payrolls, albeit not enough to budge the national unemployment numbers from their average of 9.1 percent over the last six months. Key indexes for the manufacturing and the services industries also showed signs of expansion, slight as they may be.
Political volatility was the biggest concern to U.S. Bank experts, noting the looming Nov. 23 deadline for the congressional "supercommittee" to find $1.5 trillion in cuts to the federal budget or trigger automatic cuts that "may significantly lower the U.S. economic growth trajectory," the report states. It also noted the ongoing European debt crisis, with Italy's and Spain's credit rating being lowered several steps below the top credit rating countries can receive.
"In our view, both these political issues are likely to be solved, but there may be much volatility along the way," the report reads.
It also says that the steady-but-high national unemployment rate isn't appearing to ease pressure on policymakers.
It also doesn't reflect the plight in Nevada, where unemployment hit a post-recession low in May but has climbed by more than a percentage point since then, to 13.4 percent statewide. In Carson City, the unemployment sat at 12.7 percent in September, according to the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation - a full point lower than September of last year, but no better than July 2011.
The U.S. Bank report also states that mortgage applications nationwide decreased by more than 4 percent but housing otherwise is quiet - another trend that Nevada doesn't quite fit.
Nevada still leads the nation in foreclosures, according to foreclosure tracking firm RealtyTrac. One in 44 housing units in the state had a foreclosure filing in the third quarter of this year, according to a study released Wednesday. And while the state's overall foreclosure activity had declined compared to the second quarter of the year, the number of default notices jumped by almost 15 percent.
In Carson City, the foreclosure rate is more favorable than the rest of the state, but the trend still isn't pretty: There was a 20 percent rise in local foreclosures in September, to a total of 126, over August - and that's an almost 50 percent increase over the number of foreclosures in July.
"While foreclosure activity (nationwide) in September and the third quarter continued to register well below levels from a year ago, there is evidence that this temporary downward trend is about to change direction, with
foreclosure activity slowly beginning to ramp back
up," RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio said in a
statement.